Olympic gold-medal winner Felix Sanchez, who ran a 45.99 in the 400 meters Saturday at UCSD, fondly remembers living near Doyle Park in University City.

Olympic gold-medal winner Felix Sanchez, who ran a 45.99 in the 400 meters Saturday at UCSD, fondly remembers living near Doyle Park in University City. (David Brooks)

There was the 19-year-old from Soka University, a tiny NAIA school in Aliso Viejo that’s only been around since 2001. There was a guy from Tijuana in Lane 4. Two junior college runners. One each from UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Long Beach State and the University of La Verne Leopards.

And then, peeling off his sweats in Lane 5 of the men’s 400 meters at UC San Diego’s Triton Track and Field Invitational Saturday, was Felix Sanchez.

Gianni Vernon-Reynolds, from Soka, was in Lane 6 and entered the race with the next fastest qualifying time. Sanchez was immediately to his left. Vernon-Reynolds’ goal was to hold his staggered lead — about 20 feet over Lane 5 — at least until the race’s midpoint; Sanchez blew past him in a matter of strides.

“Humbling,” said Vernon-Reynolds, who finished more than two seconds behind in third place. “Definitely humbling.”

You want humbling? You could have set up 10 36-inch hurdles in Sanchez’s lane Saturday and let everyone else run flat 400s, and he still probably would have won easily.

But there were no hard feelings, no showmanship, just deep respect and different agendas.

Everyone else is trudging along in a season of anonymous collegiate track meets across Southern California. Sanchez, 32, is attempting to cement his legacy as, in his words, “the second best (400) hurdler in history.” Saturday, for 45.99 seconds, they intersected.

The last time Sanchez ran in the Triton Invitational, 12 years ago, he was one of them. He was leaving San Diego Mesa College for USC, just a few years removed from being a promising baseball player at University City High who broke his arm and was convinced to try track and, when he did, was initially slower than some of the school’s girls.

“There’s nothing like coming back home and remembering where it all began, coming off the 5, Genesee, seeing the Mormon temple,” said Sanchez, who moved to San Diego from New York when he was 2 and grew up in apartments behind Doyle Park in La Jolla Colony. “I remember when they were building that Mormon temple. We had just moved here, and I was like, ‘Mom, mom, they’re building a castle.’ And she was like, ‘No, son.’

“It’s just good memories, man. I always cherish the good, ol’ days —high school track, junior college track —- where it was just fun and no pressure. Now it’s a little different. Now you change your mindset and get used to the pressure and feed off it.”

Now he’s an Olympic and world champion who once was undefeated for 43 straight races, who in 2004 in Athens won the first and only Olympic gold medal for the Dominican Republic (his parents’ heritage) and can’t go anywhere on the island without being mobbed.

Sanchez is close friends with Chargers defensive lineman Luis Castillo, who also has Dominican roots. They met at the San Diego Hall of Champions a few years ago and formed an instant kinship as Dominican athletes who made it big in sports other than beloved baseball.

“Luis teases me because I’m like a king there,” said Sanchez, who spends about four months a year in the Dominican Republic. “It’s funny because here, we go around and a lot of people recognize him. There, a lot of people don’t really recognize him. They think he’s my security.”

The greatest 400 hurdler in history, of course, is Edwin Moses, who won two Olympic golds and an incomprehensible 122 straight races from 1977 to 1987. Sanchez concedes that. But he’s willing to accept the spot directly behind Moses — the best among mere mortals.

To that end, his goal is to continue competing into his mid-30s and win a third World Championship in 2011 (there is no world meet this season). Moses won only two world titles.

“I just want to do something he hasn’t,” Sanchez said.

Most figured he would have done it in 2005 or 2007, but a series of injuries condemned Sanchez to mediocrity. Last year was the first he felt like himself since the 2004 Olympics. This year?

Sanchez lets the stopwatch tell the story. His time of 45.99 came on a spongy UCSD track not known for producing fast sprint times … with a stiff headwind on the home stretch … with no one to push him (Tijuana’s Salvador Gomez was second in 47.99). It’s the fastest he has run a 400 in April. Ever.

Operating the automatic timing system Saturday was John Hutsel, Sanchez’s coach at UC High.

“He looks in the best shape I’ve seen him in four or five years,” Hutsel said. “He looks healthy … But to me, he’s still that little ninth- or 10th-grader.”

Twenty minutes after the race, Soka’s Vernon-Reynolds approached Sanchez, shook his hand and asked if he’d be running in the upcoming meet at Occidental College. Sanchez politely explained that, no, he’s off to big international meets in the Caribbean, then New York, then the lucrative European circuit.